Gamedev.in - Conversations

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Thank you all for tuning into our podcast. This is our attempt at archiving the history of game development of Indian creators, through their own stories and voice. We hope you find it interesting and engaging. If you have any thoughts and suggestions, please come by our discord and have a chat!

In this episode Rishi and Yadu talk to Arvind Raja Yadav, founder, designer and developer at Pyrodactyl Games about making games from college to finding Kickstarter success and more.

People in the podcast

Arvind Raja Yadav - https://twitter.com/arvindrajayadav

Rishikanth Somayaji - https://twitter.com/rks_89

Yadu Rajiv - https://twitter.com/yadurajiv

Notes from the podcast

Pyrodactyl Games - https://pyrodactyl.com/

The A.Typical RPG - https://pyrodactyl.com/atypical-rpg/

Will Fight for Food - https://pyrodactyl.com/will-fight-for-food/

Thank you for reading Gamedev.in. This post is public so feel free to share it.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit gamedev.substack.com

Listen on Apple Podcast | Listen on Spotify | Listen on PocketCasts | Listen on Amazon Music | RSS Feed

Thank you all for tuning into our podcast. This is our attempt at archiving the history of game development of Indian creators, through their own stories and voice. We hope you find it interesting and engaging. If you have any thoughts and suggestions, please come by our discord and have a chat!

In this episode Arjun and Shagun talk to Nakul Verma, founder and director of Playbae Games about his gamedev journey from college days to releasing In My Shadow and more.

Nakul was selected as one of 2022’s Bafta Breakthrouhs from India. You can find Nakul online on the Playbae game’s account on twitter.

People in the podcast

Nakul Verma - https://twitter.com/playbaegames

Shagun Shah - https://twitter.com/ShagunShah

Arjun Nair - https://twitter.com/NairArjun

Thanks for reading Gamedev.in! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support our work.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit gamedev.substack.com

Listen on Apple Podcast | Listen on Spotify | Listen on PocketCasts | Listen on Amazon Music | RSS Feed

Thank you all for tuning into our podcast. This is our attempt at archiving the history of game development of Indian creators, through their own stories and voice. We hope you find it interesting and engaging. If you have any thoughts and suggestions, please come by our discord and have a chat!

In this episode Rishi and Arjun talk to Mala Sen and Mridul Kashatria, the dynamic duo behind Niku Games about their past, present and future as an indie studio. The podcast delves into their upcoming title The Palace On The Hill, how they started, their process and what we can expect in the future.

You can find Mala and Mridul active on their Discord Channel.

People in the podcast

Mala Sen - https://twitter.com/senmalasen

Mridul Kashatria - https://twitter.com/mridkash

Rishikanth Somayaji - https://twitter.com/rks_89

Arjun Nair - https://twitter.com/NairArjun

Thank you for reading Gamedev.in. This post is public so feel free to share it.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit gamedev.substack.com

Listen on Apple Podcast | Listen on Spotify | Listen on PocketCasts | Listen on Amazon Music | RSS Feed

Thank you all for tuning into our podcast. This is our attempt at archiving the history of game development of Indian creators, through their own stories and voice. We hope you find it interesting and engaging. If you have any thoughts and suggestions, please come by our discord and have a chat!

In this episode Saumya Iyer talks to Shagun and Yadu about her past 16 years in the games industry so far, building and nurturing communities, working on mmos, early days of f2p in India and more

People in the podcast

Saumya Iyer - https://www.linkedin.com/in/saumyaiyer/

Shagun Shah - https://twitter.com/ShagunShah

Yadu Rajiv - https://twitter.com/yadurajiv

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit gamedev.substack.com

Listen on Apple Podcast | Listen on Spotify | Listen on PocketCasts | Listen on Amazon Music | RSS Feed

Thank you all for tuning into our podcast. This is our attempt at archiving the history of game development of Indian creators, through their own stories and voice. We hope you find it interesting and engaging. If you have any thoughts and suggestions, please come by our discord and have a chat!

In this episode Yadu and Arjun talk to Shailesh Prabhu, founder of Yellow Monkey Studio, about his roots in the Indian games industry, the early days of the indie scene in India and much more.

People in the podcast

Shailesh Prabhu - https://twitter.com/shaileshprabhu

Arjun Nair - https://twitter.com/NairArjun

Yadu Rajiv - https://twitter.com/yadurajiv

Notes from the podcast

Yellow Monkey Studios - http://www.yellowmonkeystudios.com/

Ragnarok online - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ragnarok_Online

Dhruva interactive - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhruva_Interactive

Nazara Technologies - https://corp.nazara.com/

Avin Sharma - https://www.linkedin.com/in/avinsharma

Day of the Tentacle - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day_of_the_Tentacle

Mortley - A Stitch in Time - Video

Finger Footie - http://www.yellowmonkeystudios.com/games/finger-footie/

It's Just a Thought - http://www.yellowmonkeystudios.com/games/its-just-a-thought/

Huebrix - http://www.yellowmonkeystudios.com/games/huebrix/

Krishna Israney - https://people.gamedev.in/krishnaisraney

Huebrix on Kongregate - https://www.kongregate.com/games/ymstudios/huebrix

Shareware - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shareware

ID Software - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Id_Software

Does Not Commute - https://www.mediocre.se/commute/

Socioball - http://www.socioballthegame.com/

Bluk - http://www.yellowmonkeystudios.com/games/bluk/

Apoorva Joshi - https://apoorvaj.io/

Deepak Menon Madathil - https://www.linkedin.com/in/deepak-menon-m

Creative Europe - https://ec.europa.eu/culture/creative-europe

Ramayana - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramayana

Fallout 3 release cancelled in India – Article

Saint Young Men - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Young_Men

Mahabharata - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahabharata

Shark Mob - https://www.sharkmob.com/

Resident Evil Village - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resident_Evil_Village

WarioWare - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WarioWare:_Get_It_Together!

Elden Ring - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elden_Ring

Demon Souls - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon%27s_Souls_(2020_video_game)

Full Transcript

Yadu Rajiv 0:06

Hello, and welcome to the GameDev.in podcast. In this episode Arjun and Yadu catch up with Shailesh Prabhu to talk about his history with the Indian games industry, the early indie scene in India and much more.

Alright, today we have Shailesh Prabhu with us, who is the founder of Yellow Monkey Studios, and maker of many, many awesome games, and also communities as well. And many other things as well, which he will tell us what he has been doing for his entire life now. Over to you, Shailesh.

Shailesh Prabhu 0:45

Hi. I'm Shailesh. I. I've been working in games for I don't know, since 2004, or five, I think. Yeah, for almost nine years, nine months. I was at Yellow Monkey, which I founded and ran for that long. Yeah. I've worked at a bunch of studios in India. And before that, and after Yellow Monkey, I worked at a bunch of studios in Copenhagen, and then distributed work studio. And then now in Malmo, in Sweden. Yeah, I've worked on different scale of games from casual to hyper casual to AAA too. And we had a small community, which we're we're also running back back when I was in India, which, which Yadu was also I think, part of local indie game devs long ago. And I've helped, like, with some other community initiatives that were active in India when I was there. So yeah, that's, I guess me.

Yadu Rajiv 2:13

That is the briefest brief intro that we've had, I guess.

Arjun Nair 2:18

A good intro. shailesh. But when you start before you started Yellow Monkey Studios, did you just start on a whim? Or did you have some professional experience? or What was your gateway into starting your own studio?

Shailesh Prabhu 2:33

Yeah. So I mean, I was always interested in making games for for a while before that. And I didn't really know much of what for many studios there were and what kind of job opportunities there were for making games in India. So I always kind of had this in mind that, you know, maybe if we have to make games, it's gonna be like, we'll have to do our own thing. But yeah, I did. Right out of engineering college, I got a job in a games publisher that was publishing. It was called Ragnarok online. It was a Korean MMO RPG being published.

Yadu Rajiv 3:17

I remember getting a CD with a Skoar or Chip or something.

Shailesh Prabhu 3:23

Yeah. And yeah, I was working there for a few months. And it was basically like, yeah, Philippines based publisher was publishing the game here in India, actually, not here. But, and then soon after that I was working, I found myself working for Dhruva Interactive in their mobile games team. And then soon after. *cough* Sorry, yeah, so I worked after that for a bit that Dhruva Interactive and then I had to move back to Mumbai, because Dhruva was based in Bangalore, and I had to move back to Bombay. And then I took up a job at Nazara at the time. And when I was at Nazara, I was like, already doing a lot of things in the value chain of game development. And also, we had helped them, me and a bunch of friends, helped them create the team there at the time. So I found myself thinking that, well, here, we helped them set up the team and we were also doing a lot of stuff right from development to conceptualizing, to marketing, and of course, design and production. So I just felt like since we were doing pretty much everything it was, it wouldn't be the most outrageous thing to do it ourselves. And then me and one of my university friends Avin, we decided to, you know, quit and start off working on something a bit more creative than what was really happening in India at the time and so we started Yellow Monkey. And we worked on our first game, which was a point and click adventure for for the Nintendo DS. That was how we started.

Yadu Rajiv 5:33

Were you always doing design at Dhruva and Nazara, were you focused on? Okay.

Shailesh Prabhu 5:43

At Dhruva it was mostly again, design at Nazara it was doing design as well as production. And also like marketing and stuff like talking to publishers and talking to the ISP, not ISP. mobile network store owners, this was back in the day of pre iOS App Store days. So pre smartphone game,

Arjun Nair 6:11

The primitive days.

Shailesh Prabhu 6:12

Yes.

Arjun Nair 6:14

Then we were still hiding in caves

Shailesh Prabhu 6:16

Yup.

Yadu Rajiv 6:18

So when you started Yellow Monkey was, was it just about kind of the iOS boom starting up? Was was it? Was it around that time?

Shailesh Prabhu 6:29

No, it was a couple of years before that. I think we started in 2005. And at that time, we were working towards like we wanted to do more, something more interesting than what was happening in India, because in India at the time, it was all mostly all Bollywood, cricket, and astrology kind of stuff.

Arjun Nair 6:56

What's wrong with astrology?

Shailesh Prabhu 6:59

Well, I mean ...

Yadu Rajiv 7:01

It's all in the sky.

Shailesh Prabhu 7:03

Nothing is wrong if you if that's what you want to do. But you know, you can make money in a lot of ways. It's just that we didn't want to do that. So you're thinking of doing something more, like more video games.

Yadu Rajiv 7:16

So you're saying you didn't want to make money Shailesh?

Shailesh Prabhu 7:18

Yeah, isn't that evident?

Arjun Nair 7:23

Long winded way of saying that. Yeah.

Shailesh Prabhu 7:25

Yeah. So we decided to work on we wanted to do like some console PC style games. And we realized that, since we already had a background in mobile, maybe the next best step would be to start off with hand…

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit gamedev.substack.com

Listen on Apple Podcast | Listen on Spotify | Listen on PocketCasts | Listen on Amazon Music | RSS Feed

Thank you all for tuning into our podcast. This is our attempt at archiving the history of game development of Indian creators, through their own stories and voice. We hope you find it interesting and engaging. If you have any thoughts and suggestions, please come by our discord and have a chat!

In this episode Yadu and Arjun talk to Armaan of Frostwood Interactive about his roots, inspirations for Rainswept, Forgotten Fields, and his next secret project.

People in the podcast

Armaan - https://twitter.com/Armaan_S92

Arjun Nair - https://twitter.com/NairArjun

Yadu Rajiv - https://twitter.com/yadurajiv

Notes from the podcast

Frostwood Interactive - Link

Rainswept - Link

Unity - Link

How I quit my 9-5 and became a full time indie game dev - Video

Twin Peaks - Link

Memories of Murder - Link

EGX Rezzed - Link

Forgotten Fields - Link

Rami Ismail - Link

Dino Digital - Link

Chit fund - Link

Neon Bedlam - Link

Poets of the Fall - Late Goodbye - Link

Silent Hill - Link

Invisible Waves - Link

Michal Michalski - Link

Goa - Link

Audacity - Link

Adventure Creator - Link

Alan Wake - Link

Silent Hill 2 - Link

Last life in the Universe / "Reung Rak Noi Nid Mahasarl" - Link

David Lynch - Link

Full Transcript

Yadu Rajiv 0:07

Hello, and thank you for tuning in to the gamedev.in podcast. In this episode Yadu, and Arjun talk to Armaan of Frostwood Interactive about his roots, inspirations for Rainswept, Forgotten Fields, and his next secret project.

So I guess I'll give a quick intro, I am Yadu. I mean, we have met Armaan, and I've met before in the IGDC. With the help of a bunch of people, we run gamedev.in. And this whole thing is basically like a way of trying to figure out whether we can kind of archive histories of game designers and developers who kind of make up our industry. How can we preserve this for a future generation, at the same time, also help kind of up and coming developers and also, so yeah, so all these kind of this is kind of where we started, when we thought about doing this kind of a podcast kind of a thing. So it's primarily archival in nature. And then we thought it will be interesting for people to just catch up and also to talk about what they're doing, who they are, those kind of things. So that is where I am coming from, this is Arjun, Arjun?

Arjun 1:26

Yeah. Hey. So I think I joined GameDev(.in) very recently. So my role has been to basically set up these chats so far. Basically, we're trying to have these conversations with all the indie game devs in India, at least, you know, their journey, document their journey and stuff. But my role so far in the industry has been as a professional programmer. So I've been in industry for some time now. And I thought it's time you know, that. And I've been very, you know, closeted kind of individual. I don't, I'm very private kind of individual. I don't mix with people. So I thought it's time to, you know, go out and meet someone new, faces and stuff. So, and Armaan I actually met you in 2019. In IGDC. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think you may remember me, and others lost souls, traveling through all the booths, you know, trying to check out stuff.

Yadu Rajiv 2:20

This guy's selling steam keys.

Arjun 2:24

That's what caught my eye like in the sea of commercial people. There's this one guy is selling steam keys ok, I had to check him out. So yeah, so I guess that's, that's us. Maybe Armaan, you can talk about yourself?

Armaan 2:40

Yeah. So I'm a game developer working solo under the name of Frostwood Interactive, and I've released two games so far. One was Rainswept in 2019. And the other one recently is Forgotten Fields. And yeah, I was an architect before that, but wasn't really interested in architecture. I guess we can go more in details later.

Arjun 3:01

Yeah, yeah.

Armaan 3:02

And yeah, so just a game developer, and I'm working on the third game now.

Yadu Rajiv 3:07

So our first question was, who is Armaan? I guess we kind of answered that. So how did you get into games?

Armaan 3:17

Um, so I was always interested in games. But you know, back when I was exiting school, and during college, there wasn't much of a scene in India, right. So it was very difficult. So I kind of gave up on that dream. So I went instead into art and went into architecture, didn't really like architecture, started getting into films, and tried working on a TV set for a couple of months. Didn't like that. And then I returned to architecture did a job for a year and around then this indie scene started kind of picking up. So I realized that I could possibly learn unity, put something on Steam. So I did a lot of research and yeah, just made the shift.

Arjun 4:07

So you're actually, you actually have an architecture background?

Armaan 4:10

Yeah.

Arjun 4:11

Okay, so how did you pick up programming and all that stuff that came with Unity?

Armaan 4:15

So I still don't really program much. Because Unity and you can use all these visual tools. Yeah, so a lot of node based stuff. I did try you know, a little bit of programming, learning a bit of that. And you know, when you get stuck when you when you want to do something custom you need to program so it's, yeah, I mostly don't do programming but I kind of make do without it.

Yadu Rajiv 4:41

So when when did you kind of formally start Frostwood and how did that kind of happen? Was it the first game or?

Armaan 4:51

So around 2017 I was doing the architecture job. And yeah, around then I was also researching and trying to learn, you know, how to how to work with Unity and everything. And yeah, I knew that I wanted to make the first game Rainswept which would be a murder mystery. And as it started getting more and more serious and it started sounding, you know that this could actually work. I started finding, you know, trying to figure out a exit strategy from architecture, trying to transition. So about six months of learning unity and doing the job at the same time. And then I quit the job and launched a demo. And around that time, it kind of became formal once I left the job. And after that, there was one and a half year more of development, which I did from home.

Arjun 5:46

What gave you the idea for Rainswept?

Yadu Rajiv 5:50

Very film noir!

Arjun 5:52

Yeah

Armaan 5:53

Yeah. So I mean, those are always themes that I was in love with. So Twin Peaks is a show, which is like one of my favorite shows of all time. And if I had to creatively express myself or make something, it would be something like that. You know, small town, rain, mystery, that kind of stuff. Also another movie Memories of Murder, which is I forget his name, but the same director who made Parasite, which has really blown up recently. That is another movie, which was a big inspiration, another murder mystery. So yeah, when, you know, I decided that Okay, I'm going to make a game, it was going to be all those topics, and it just kind of came together on its own.

Yadu Rajiv 6:37

You, you self published, sorry...

Arjun 6:40

yeah go on go on go on

Yadu Rajiv 6:41

You self published Rainswept, wasn't it?

Armaan 6:43

Yeah.

Yadu Rajiv 6:44

So? And are you thinking about kind of putting it out on other platforms? And how has it been getting on Steam? How was your experience with all that?

Armaan 6:57

It wasn't too difficult, actually. Yeah, surprisingly, simple. But I guess if you don't keep it simple, you can probably you know, have a bigger impact also. So I kept it simple. And I just did everything on my own. And year after release, I went for EGX in London, EGX Rezzed, and then I met some publishers, so they have ported it to consoles it released last year on consoles. So yeah, a year after PC, it had some, you know, sort of, like, I could show the game to the publishers, and they were interested in Yeah, it's on PS4 switch and Xbox now.

Arjun 7:36

So during this time, how did you finance yourself?

Armaan 7:39

So I was livi…

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit gamedev.substack.com

Listen on Apple Podcast | Listen on Spotify | Listen on PocketCasts | Listen on Amazon Music | RSS Feed

Thank you all for tuning into our first ever podcast. This is our attempt at archiving the history of game development of Indian creators, through their own stories and voice. We hope you find it interesting and engaging. If you have any thoughts and suggestions, please come by our discord and have a chat!

On this episode, we talk to Abhi from Visai games, who is creating an amazing narrative cooking game where you play as an Indian immigrant mom, who immigrates to Canada with her family in the 1980s.

People in the podcast

Abhi - https://twitter.com/brownmoney__

Shagun Shah - https://twitter.com/ShagunShah

Yadu Rajiv - https://twitter.com/yadurajiv

Notes from the podcast

Venba - http://venbagame.com/

Unity - https://unity.com/

Yarn Spinner - https://yarnspinner.dev/

Night in the Woods - http://www.nightinthewoods.com/

Idli - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idli

Puttu - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puttu

Biriyani - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biryani

Cooking Mama - http://www.cookingmama.com/

Cook, Serve, Delicious - https://www.cookservedelicious.com

Overcooked - http://www.ghosttowngames.com/

Porotta - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parotta

Tirukkuṟaḷ - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tirukku%E1%B9%9Fa%E1%B8%B7

Lungi - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lungi

Full Transcript

Yadu Rajiv 0:07

Hello, and thank you for tuning in to the game dev dot in podcast. In this episode Yadu and Shagun catch up with Abhi from Visai games, to talk about his roots and the secret spice behind his up and coming narrative cooking game, Venba.

My first question was basically going to ask you what your last name was, but that should be fine, because I couldn't find your name anywhere so, but it doesn't matter.

Abhi 0:36

Maybe I know we just started recording, but maybe you can cut this part out. But yeah. The reason I hide it is I had people reach out to me through channels that I didn't expect them to reach out. And I'm just that just struck me a little, like, you know, I'm very private that way. So, people reaching out to me like, like, Instagram, Twitter is fine. But if they're finding my LinkedIn, I feel like you know what I mean?

Yadu Rajiv 1:05

That is what I was trying to find.

Abhi 1:11

I don't mind sharing it with you. But like, if it's random people that are messaging again. So that started happening. So is that okay, I need to hide my last name and stuff like that. I'm glad it works. So..

Yadu Rajiv 1:22

Yeah, yeah. So it was kind of difficult. So I mean, basically, just kind of get an idea of what what like, like, maybe we can just get into it. So how did you get into games? How did this happen?

Abhi 1:38

Yeah, um, yeah. So I my parents brought home, the knock off console back home when I was in Chennai, it was called The Terminator, the black with the blue buttons, I'm sure all of you know, I played the crap out of that system. I think it was like 10 games for 999 there was like 999 games, but it was the same 10 game games over and over, so I played the crap out of that but much to my parents disapproval. And then Ever since then, like there was no stopping, like my dad he worked at a bank, But we wanted to get into [unclear], like he brought home a computer [unclear] that way. So I, I naturally installed video games like lion, King, Aladdin, and all those things that some guy gave it to me at a book fair. So I was very much interested in video games that way. What was a, I think the turning point for me was I played Pokemon. But I played it at an emulator. Not like in the physical device, I didn't even know it was meant to be played on a physical device. I played it on a computer, so but you can't catch all 151 unless you trade with other people on the physical device. So I only got like 135, and no idea how to get the rest, there was no internet. And then, and then, my parents announced to me that they're moving to Canada, and it was I think, 11 we finally finished moving when I was 12. And then I come here, and it's an Xbox 360 ps3, it's a whole new world, you know,

Yadu Rajiv 3:28

Skipped a couple of generations there.

Abhi 3:30

Exactly, as a way, Pokemon was meant to be played on like, not a computer. So learning all that, and I, you know, I've made a bunch of games with my friends houses and things like that. I was I always wanted to do it. This is the point that I'm trying to get across. And then around grade 12, which is when you decide like, you know what you're going into sort of thing. I chose computer science, because my reasoning is that my parents are, my family is not going to buy game design as a career path. So I thought, you know, I learned the, the approved method. And I will I will get into games as a programmer. And that way you can get my foot in, and that way like you, my parents are happy too. So that's that that was my thinking in grade 12. And it's eerily that's exactly what happened. So when I graduated, my last year at university, I competed in a video game making competition. I did really well with my team in there. So I got a job at a mobile game studio. And that's where I've been since.

Yadu Rajiv 4:42

So So how did Visai happen?

Abhi 4:46

So in that specific mobile game studio, I make a an artist named Sam Elkana, he's Indonesian, Him and I have like very similar tastes and opinions about games and things like that. So we always shot around game ideas and like, you know, we should make our game together. I was making this like mythological Indian game for us. I pitched that to him. And then we made a superhero game called balloon man, and like we were making it. And then I had the idea about Venba, which is like, you know, so I remember I even texted him like one day, I was like, Hey, here's a here's a scene from the game. What do you what do you think about this game? And he, he immediately liked it. And he liked something like, that gives me a lot of confidence. So we started moving forward with that. And that's how Visai happened basically.

Shagun Shah 5:43

So tell us more about Venba? About the game? What inspired you?

Abhi 5:49

Yeah, for sure. Um, so yeah, so as I mentioned, I texted him something, it was like a scene from one level of the game, which happens towards the end. Like, for me, something was bugging me about, you know, the dynamics between parents and their immigrated children. Not especially not, not specifically, I think it's across all cultures. And that's why I think Sam, who's, you know, not from India, was still able to relate to it, because he's also, like me, a first generation immigrant. So I felt that a lot of media that existed around immigration issues, focused on people like me, or the second generation kids, you know, oh, they have it really hard because of the cultural identity crisis and things like that. And that's true to an extent. But I felt like there's not enough focus on the parents, you know, who have a really strong identity already back home, but they choose to give that up to move here. And then, because they're bringing up their kids here, there's a disconnect. And it's just an unfortunate incident, they have different values. And a lot of times I saw that people are regretting even coming here in the first place. So that was really bugging me a lot. And I wrote that into a little conversation. And I sent that to Sam and he said, that same thing is bugging him also. And I really like that. So we decided to me, you know, and I said, like, you know, what do you think about a game that explores this with food as the as the bridge, you know, as the gameplay mechanics and he really like that, so we set the [unclear] that basically how Venba started.

Shagun Shah 7:39

That's, that's an absolutely fantastic story. That's so interesting to hear, you know how, yeah, because I think there's no one's quite seen a game like Venba. And it seems very much like, almost like a cultural critique in some …

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit gamedev.substack.com